


The Trees are Licked with Flame but Still the Forest Stands

by jonasnightingale



Series: Roan Lives [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clarke Griffin & Roan Friendship, F/M, Gen, Roan (The 100) Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 13:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19831615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonasnightingale/pseuds/jonasnightingale
Summary: Because when she was vomiting black bile onto lab tables he was listening to the mountain collapse on his small bunker; when she described the desolation he sobbed for the home they'd lost; and there are scars across his hands from the frenzied attempt to unearth himself when she held a gun to her head. The Ring did not receive her calls, but one little receiver in the shelter Roan found did, and he listened... 2,199 days.---





	The Trees are Licked with Flame but Still the Forest Stands

She’s glad that someone had been listening, mostly. She’s glad that someone gets the references she occasionally drops into conversation, that someone knows to step closer when crows fly overhead, that there’s someone else who _understands_. She’s less glad that he’s heard her break down. But on this new planet with the icy distance between everyone she’s ever known, she’s so grateful to have him. 

The banished King teaches the young Commander. Standing strong beside her in a world with no need for the great Wanheda. And Clarke feels less scared of the voices inside Maddie’s head with him there to help keep them in check. 

She relies on him in the way she had once Bellamy; and it simultaneously makes the ache in her heart hurt less and more. Still, his own long history with Echo means she’s careful to not mention either of their names; though the looks he sends her say that he knows enough anyway. It’s another part of why she’s only **mostly** glad he was listening. 

She struggles to be sure if the anger behind Echo’s gaze is because of this friendship, or another residual factor from Earth. Though Roan never lets the discomfort between the two women affect his friendships. Bellamy isn’t so skilled.

Most nights they find themselves around the fire-pit at the crest of the hill, watching the city below in mute. Six years of solitude left them familiar with the silence. Octavia joins them on Tuesday nights, bringing occasionally a new recipe from days in this new community’s kitchen. They spar on Thursdays. There’s so much they never discuss; but the weight feels a little lighter on their shoulders regardless, and they’ve learned to say a lot without words. 

His apartment has her drawings stuck to the walls, and she has his spare key for nights she screams herself awake. She spends more nights in his bed than she’d care to admit, tracing the patterns of scars across his torso when sleep continues to evade her. Maddie keeps asking for a copy of the key too; for the early mornings that find her unable to make sense of the conflicting tales in her head. Roan tries to reign in the snark when he tells her to go pester Bellamy for _his_ key - its lost on no-one which brooding leader the girl prefers.

Clarke was not given an official seat in the new political structure, but Roan still volleys ideas off her as they always have, a give and take of “what’s best for our people” and the occasional raised eyebrow.

And still when she thinks of the years of unanswered radio calls she feels nauseated and ungainly. But he gives her something more to see in all those pathetic shouts into the void one night after she has let herself in and slipped into bed beside him, cuddling into his heat and pressing her ear hard against his heartbeat. He doesn’t open his eyes, just smooths a hand over her hair as she settles. She whispers into the darkness and he responds with a barely conscious “They kept me alive. Talking to him kept you sane, listening to you kept me.” And she wants to know more, know if he tried to talk back for all those years, where he kept the radio so he’d hear it when she messaged, or if she’s inflating his level of care. But it hurts her to talk on those six years, and she has a feeling maybe it hurts him even more.

Murphy has taken to calling them “The Princess and the King”. 

She wants to explain that it’s not like that, but there’s few who would bother to listen, let alone care, so she just dubs him an honorary team cockroach and lets the topic drop. She’ll gladly take title of this “unworthy king”.


End file.
